The Endgame
by chayashix
Summary: Black and white, life and death: who wins, when there are only a few pieces left to play? Written for RivaMika Week 2.0 Day 8, February 2014. Prompt: Whatever You Like, featuring Dr. Ackerman and chess. Implied Levi x Mikasa. Vignette fic: 16 scenes, each under 200 words.


_Written for RivaMika Week 2.0 Day 8, February 2014_  
_Credit to Mika60 for plot bait_  
_See end for additional notes_  
_Vignette fic: 16 scenes, each under 200 words_

* * *

#####

The first time they meet, he looks perfectly fine – vitality and grit compressed in alternating lines, bound in a crisp white shirt and crowned in black grace.

She studies the cryptic reports, talks him through the options. He 'hmphs' and 'tsks' now and again, indifferent glances hurtling condemnation at the scans strung up like Jolly Rogers on her wall-mounted lightbox.

"Do you have any other questions, Mr. Levi?"

He mutters acerbically about unknown outcomes and wasted time, before standing up to leave.

She doesn't stop him, knowing that he has no choice but to return again.

If there's one thing that all her years as an oncologist have taught her, it is that life is very, very cruel.

#####

He comes to her office a few more times after that, but never asks about the prognosis. His sole complaint is that the drugs make him feel like a fucking zombie all the time.

When his condition fails to improve after first-line treatment, she duly suggests he seek a second opinion. Only then do his eyes fix upon hers, twisting and turning within whitewashed walls.

Cold steel flashes raw as the legs of his chair scrape rejection into her sterile linoleum floor.

"That won't be necessary, Dr. Ackerman. I trust you."

#####

His first stint in the ward comes two days after a particularly toxic round of therapy. Abeyance drips into his veins from a red plastic bag; despite his ghastly complexion, his eyes burn dark with defiance.

"When can I get up. This bed is disgusting, I need a shower."

She flicks through his file, scribbling notes here and there. "When your counts stabilize. Or would you prefer to end up on the floor again?"

"Ch." He glowers at her pen, restlessness clawing at every pore. "If only my mind gave out as easily as my body. I'm bored out of my wits."

"Your body is telling you it needs rest. You should listen to it, sometimes, even if you don't like listening to me."

She looks up when the scritch-scratch of a lousy ballpoint on thin paper rises above the dead air.

"...that's not it," he mutters, coarse cotton sheets crumpling limply in his fists.

The binder falls shut with a gentle thump. "I'll see you again, tomorrow."

"Bring some damned nose plugs, then," he calls out after her. "The stench is unbearable."

#####

"_Chess_?"

She angles the bait towards him between checkered fingers. "I didn't think the chick lit in the patients' rec room would hold your interest. This is from the staff lounge."

"And you thought this would be better."

The magnetic coffin flicks open, spilling little cadavers all over his blanket. "What, you don't know how to play?"

He scoffs. "The guy who taught me was a real creep. Never understood why he was so obsessed with it."

"Then you've probably been playing it wrong. It's not about the current move," she says, manipulating the pieces with practiced ease. "It's about setting up the one you want to make, in the future."

Plastic figurines fall in opposing lines, saluting with archaic chivalry.

"Here, I'll start."

She plucks an ivory statue from the ranks.

"First move, d4," she announces. "Statistically speaking, the odds are against you."

Retrieving her stethoscope from his bedside table, she drapes the cherry-red rubber around her neck. "My next ward round is in 4 hours. That should give you plenty of time, to plan your response."

#####

"Check."

"Ch."

Her brows curve in skeptical arcs as he scowls at her bishop. "You really do suck at this. That's the third time already."

"Shut up." Reaching forward, he grabs his rook and crucifies it on the single empty square between them.

"Are you sure you don't want to think about it some more? I can come back, later."

"No. And you'd better not be charging me for all these _extra_ consultations," he grumbles. "I'm not going to die, yet."

"Don't worry. I consider it part of my _holistic_ treatment plan." She studies the board, tapping scrubbed nails on the stack of discharge papers nearby. "Mate in five. I'll let you resign with dignity, this round."

He takes a moment to decipher her intentions, before shoving a frustrated foot into his somber Oxfords. "This will be the last time."

"...I hope so, actually," she murmurs, passing him the signed forms.

#####

"Excuse me."

The head nurse turns with a friendly smile. "Yes, Dr. Ackerman?"

"Did the patient from bed 43 leave anything behind?"

"Hmm, I don't think so. We went through the drawers, everything has been cleared out."

"Oh... alright, never mind."

A frown settles on Mikasa's face as she continues down the hall, wondering what to do about the misplaced game.

#####

"Eager for revenge, are we?" she comments, noting the two familiar pawns already locked in combat on the table.

His reply runs faint over the hum of the blood pressure monitor strangling his arm. "It would take too long, otherwise."

She scrawls out a prescription in response to the depressed numbers, and hands it to the departing nurse. "I assume you have a strategy, then?"

"Perhaps."

Another white scout shuffles forward, joining shoulders with its comrade in the fourth rank.

"...the Queen's Gambit, huh."

A smile pulls at the corner of her mouth. "Oh? Looks like somebody has been reading up."

"A little," he concedes, meeting her fading aggression with a glimmer of black humor.

His hand advances slowly, careful to avoid any sudden motion.

"Gambit accepted," he declares, capturing her mischievous pawn with his own.

#####

"You lose."

"Indeed."

She contemplates the small congregation at the edge the playing field; her queen hails triumphant, but only one of her subjects remains to pay tribute.

Her chair skitters back as she stands to stretch.

"You should eat something," he says.

"And so should you," she admonishes, pointing at the untouched lunch tray.

#####

"The same opening. _Again_."

Her white-coated shoulders rise and fall in composed synchrony. "Hasn't failed me yet."

"Oh, really?" he counters. "What will you do, then, if someone tries to unbalance you using more – _unconventional_ – means?"

A peculiar expression crosses her face as his second steed saunters into position.

"The Black Knight's Tango," he says, and she swears there's a smirk hiding behind his dry lips. "I'll take the lead, this time."

#####

Disbelief reigns over her crippled battalion.

"What. Don't tell me you're going to dispute my win."

She almost retorts with a yes, but reluctantly admits she has been completely besieged by his royal couple.

The IV pump feeding from the back of his hand taunts her with a beep.

"Ah, you're done. I'll go call the nurse."

#####

The bitter smell of 4am coffee jolts her back to life, as she wanders from the ER to the wards.

Maybe it's become a habit, she muses. The duty staff nod as she passes by, quietly guarding the tombs that line the walls.

He should be asleep at this time, in any case.

She pauses in front of his closed door; through the shaded glass, she can see him sitting under the ailing fluorescent light, gaze drawn to the far window as brittle drops of rain rap relentlessly on the panes outside.

The cheap paper cup collapses in her hand, eventually finding its way into one of the hallway bins.

#####

"Dr. Ackerman."

His breaths come heavy and strained, drowning out the loosely chained vulgarities cascading from his mouth.

"How long?"

"Since about two hours ago," the attending nurse replies.

"Levi, how bad is the pain? One to ten."

"Don't give me fucking number games to play now," he manages to spit between clenched teeth. "_Just do something_."

A splash of disinfectant evaporates rapidly on her feverish hands. "It's fine, I'll do it," she tells the nurse, taking the syringe.

She pulls a little more of the clear fluid from the vial than usual, thankful that the young assistant lacks sufficient experience to query her judgment.

She knows it has been compromised already, as the merciful needle tears into his skin.

#####

"Who would have thought, that it would come to this...?"

A quintet gathers reverently in the corner of the board, as she offers deliverance with a single white knight.

It's hard to be certain exactly what he is talking about these days; that's the problem with morphine.

"It's a pity, really," he mumbles.

"Why?"

"What's the worst way to put it..." He closes his eyes, leaning back on his pillow. "That we had never met earlier. Or that it took something like this for our paths to cross. I don't know," he says, chuckling weakly. "Things have stopped making sense in my head."

He opens his eyelids a fraction, cobbling the outcome together between fits of exhaustion.

"Smothered Mate... you win."

#####

Paralysis only leads to a foregone conclusion, but she comes to check on him anyway.

The numbing cycles on the monitor confirm the continued functioning of his heart, yet she reaches out, twice a day, to feel the beat of his pulse under his slack wrist.

Once, her fingers unintentionally find their way into his open palm; she thinks she feels him twitch as her nails drag across the hidden creases, but she's not sure.

Two rows of immortal soldiers stand at attention by the side, vestiges of a game just begun. A pair of lonely pawns face off in the center, balanced on opposite ends of an unforgiving divide.

"Something different, then."

Picking a noble sacrifice from the back row, she slides it all the way out to the right edge of the board, crossing into enemy lines.

"The Wayward Queen Attack," she says, in answer to his silent surprise. "How would you play against that? You have plenty of time... to plan your response."

#####

He steals away, when she's not looking. They call her back to complete her responsibilities as the chief physician. When she arrives, they have already unhooked the machines; there is no whirring or beeping to serve as consolation for the absent mourners.

She fills in the endless forms, signs the papers. When her duties are done, she walks all the way to the next wing of the hospital.

The specialist clinics have been abandoned for the day, but still she walks on, through the spiraling corridors and into the hollow bowels of bleached counters and sanitized tiles.

Locking the bathroom door with a clatter, she sinks back against the flimsy partition, and concentrates on breathing in time with the unbroken intervals of a mechanical ventilator. In and out. In, and out. In. And out.

#####

When she returns to the ward, the bed is already empty. There is nothing else to put away, except for the abandoned chess set.

Sweeping the pieces aside, she flips the board over, exposing a pale scrap of paper taped to the shedding felt:

_**Thank you.**_

She buries the troops under their flag of honor, and drops the casing into her pocket, cold steel slipping from her grasp into the void.

[ - END - ]

* * *

_Notes:_

_- Chess moves referenced: Queen's Pawn Opening, Queen's Gambit Accepted, Damiano's Mate, Black Knight's Tango, Cozio's Mate, Smothered Mate, Wayward Queen Attack._

_- The specific cancer Levi is suffering from is lymphoma._


End file.
